


30 Hours

by CyanideBreathmint



Category: Ghost in the Shell (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Cunnilingus, F/M, Hair-pulling, Masturbation, PIV Sex, Smut, implied trans batou, lbr the two of them just need to unconstipate their emotions, poor proto, poor togusa, this is what proto missed when he was unconscious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29578875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: This is part of what was happening to the rest of Section 9 while Proto was unconscious after the end of Krawatte, and it bridges the gap somewhat between Krawatte and Kintsugi. This is also uncharacteristically smutty for my GitS:SAC fic, and therefore I'm not including it in the main fic collection. It's rather a bonus story if you're interested in Batou/Major smut and character study. Also features a very distraught Togusa, not that I can blame Togusa for being distraught given the situation.The Major turns to Batou for comfort after losing Kuze, and he finds himself serving as an emotional and physical surrogate to her, because he loves her, and cannot say it aloud. But perhaps they come to an understanding after those first 30 hours.
Relationships: Batou/Kusanagi Motoko
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	30 Hours

8:17 PM, Harima, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9 

Batou is left standing alone with the Major as Dr. Kanazawa and his team of engineers rush Proto into the Harima lab’s surgical suite for emergency repairs, and he glances wordlessly at her, worried at the mute pain in her gaze. 

“Major,” he murmurs to her over cybercomm, silently, but there is no response. “Major,” Batou says again, this time with his mouth, _“Motoko.”_ She flinches minutely at his use of her name, a gesture that only Batou would pick up — it’s barely a twitch of her fingers, a single blink as her gaze slides slowly over him. “The flight crew are ready to take off, Major,” Batou says, quietly, slowly. “They’ve messaged me from the helipad.”

“I see,” the Major says, slowly, as though her mind is elsewhere. Maybe it’s the same place it has been all week, since she dived into Kuze’s hub cyberbrain. “Let’s go back to HQ.” 

Batou has known the Major for decades now, long enough that he can guess as to what she’s thinking. Well, partially. Proto, poor bastard, might not make it, not even with the emergency backup the Major had taken on the flight out to Harima. The attack barrier he ran into was one designed to kill intruders, not incapacitate them, and a human hacker would have died of a massive stroke right then and there. And yet he held out long enough to see this mission to the end, dying silently and unknown, un-comforted in a dark office, without anyone by him at the end.

Batou is not the kind of man to be ashamed of tears, but he has no more tears left to cry, not after he had his eyes replaced with the prosthetics he wears now. Now he has only the option of spitting, and his mouth floods with salt as he thinks of the losses Section 9 has taken. Yano is dead. Proto is probably dead. And the Tachikomas are gone, this time for good, and that’s enough to make him fight the urge to sob. Crying won’t bring any of them back, and Section 9 still has work to do. 

And that is, Batou senses, a good part of what the Major is thinking right now, because she’s a good commander, and no commander wants to lose men. But there’s something else that rings hollowly like a box sealed off, locked away from the world, its contents hidden from his sight, and he registers it every time she hesitates, or misses something he’s saying. It’s as though he has found a hidden drawer in an armoire that he lacks the means to open, and he can only scrabble smoothly at the wood and hope to find the triggering mechanism. 

It’s Kuze, he knows. He doesn’t know why the Major cares about him that much, only that she does. And because Batou has loved the Major since the day he first laid eyes on her, it also feels as though part of himself has died, as well. Because this pain is something he can’t reach to comfort or assuage or set right, and there’s nothing Batou hates and resents more than feeling helpless. 

“You can rest if you want to,” he tells her silently, after the chopper has taken off. “I’ll wake you before we land.” The Major might resist looking vulnerable in front of the crew — and Batou understands that. A commander has to convince their men that they’re invincible, indefatigable, sometimes, in order to keep their confidence and loyalty. But it’s just the two of them now, and a flight crew of two Operator androids, and the Major has never been afraid to rely on Batou, her XO, before. 

So Batou feels a quiet sense of relief when the Major lets her head rest on his shoulder, and he tucks his arm around hers, supporting her silently while she snatches a few minutes of quiet. She won’t sleep, he knows, but he hopes that this brief rest will at least give her the strength to get through the debriefing session. The Major will find that strength anyway, rest or no rest, but it will cost her more if she hasn’t, and this Individual Eleven plot has cost Section 9 enough. 

That’s what a good second-in-command does, too. They keep tabs on the team, and on their commanding officer. Makes sure everyone is in the best condition possible given the stresses they’re working under. The CO makes the unpopular decisions. The XO helps massage opinions until it’s not so unpopular. Not that Batou has that much opinion management to do in a team as professional as the guys at Section 9. They, each and every one of them, know the risks they run working in a job like this, and Batou is proud to work with them, each and every day. 

—  
11:42 PM, Niihama City, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9 

Togusa accosts Batou out of the debriefing, as the rest of the crew go off to the locker rooms, save for Ishikawa, who’s about to get escorted back to the hospital on Chief Aramaki’s orders. Batou doesn’t envy him, having to spend the next two weeks being ordered around by nurses. 

Togusa’s gaze is dark, haunted with an echo of the hurt that Batou has seen in the Major’s gaze. “Proto,” he says to Batou. “You went to Harima with the Major… is he going to make it?” There’s hope in Togusa’s face, and guilt, and Batou starts to understand. Proto had still been alive when Togusa and the Chief had left to detain Gouda, and Togusa had been the one to find Proto dead. But Batou has no lies left to tell, not even comforting ones.

“It looks bad, honestly,” he says, clapping Togusa on the shoulder. “The Major took an emergency backup on the way to Harima, got into Proto’s skull with my knife and plugged straight into his memory. They might be able to bring him back with it.” 

“Might.”

“He might not be the same person, not entirely, with the hardware damage he’s taken, even if he does make it. But you can’t flog yourself over it. You had a job to do.” 

“I asked him if he could hold out, you know, before I left.” Togusa says, and now he starts to shake, tremors in his hands prefiguring a full body shudder from stress and exhaustion. “He said yes. I told him I’d come back for him. I failed him.” 

“Togusa.” Batou gives him a shake, a gentle one, in an attempt to knock him out of the cycle of guilt he’s caught up in. “Proto’s a professional too. He told you yes, because he knew he wouldn’t. And he wanted you to be able to act without hesitation. Give him the credit for that, at least.” Batou isn’t sure if that’s what Proto had actually intended. At this point, only the Major would know what Proto had been thinking, and she would have to access his memories from the backup she took to know. And that she would not do, not without permission or a valid reason.

But this half-truth, this is a lie Batou can still manage, and it will do no harm. Togusa nods once, shakes his head and blinks, hard. “Go home to your wife and kids, okay?” Batou tells him. “We’ll update you once we get the news on Proto, I promise. And get some sleep.” 

Togusa sucks in a deep breath, scrunches his face up and forces himself to relax, and Batou can see the composure rolling down his face as he re-centers his thoughts, focuses on the promise of his family. “You too, big guy,” he says, before he turns and trudges to the lobby, to take the elevator down to the parking garage. 

Batou only allows himself to shake while standing under the hot shower, lets the salt of his tears run unseen out of his mouth as he scrubs the dirt and dust and mud off his skin. It’s something he did when his body was still organic, hiding his tears in the shower where nobody would see them — and he hasn’t done this again in a rather long time. Not until recently, and then today. 

The last time was when he had refused to kill Marco Amoretti after cornering him in the Niihama City sewers, and the Major had been there to comfort him afterwards. “You know, you saved one of them this time,” she told him, and that had been something he had almost forgotten, caught up in the pain of his past. He had made a difference this time. And that one life saved was something to hold on to in the bloody churn of his anger and grief. 

It takes Batou a few minutes to master his body again, after letting out the fear and hurt he’s feeling, and he’s the last one out of the locker room, his hair left loose and wet down his back, dripping onto the shearling of his heavy coat as he trudges out to find the elevator and the parking garage, and his precious car. He feels lighter now, a little less weighted down by excess emotion, and he’s reached a place within himself that is numb, detached. A place from which to keep going until he can find rest and succor and rebuild his energies for the coming day.

But Batou’s not alone in the parking garage, when he gets there. He spots the Major sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, her hands on the steering wheel. The keys are in the ignition and she has not turned them, and Batou pauses on the way back to his Lancia Stratos, walks over to the Major’s car and knocks on the window instead. She twitches once in a little start, and glances up at him, then pops the locks on the doors, and Batou climbs into the passenger seat beside her. 

“You haven’t gone home yet?” he asks her. 

“Neither have you,” she says. 

“Togusa needed a few minutes, after the debriefing,” says Batou. 

“I’m sorry, that should have been my job.” 

“My job, your job, it’s taken care of. He’ll be fine.” The Major nods. “Where are you going? Home?” he asks her, after a few moments of silence pass. 

“I don’t know. That’s what I was trying to figure out, until you came in and interrupted me.” 

That brings a slight smile to Batou’s face. The Major’s annoyance is something comforting, familiar, even on hell-days like these. “I’m not sorry for that,” he tells her. “Look. You haven’t really been eating, and you probably should. Let’s go grab something better than those horrible sandwiches that only I like.” 

“Not drinks?” the Major asks him. “Batou, I don’t need a nursemaid.”

Batou shakes his head. “No, but you need an XO, and the team still needs you, Major.”

The Major sighs in capitulation. “Okay. Drinks after food?” 

“Sure,” Batou says, making a tiny concession. It’s the only way to get the Major to do what you want sometimes — to let her feel that she’s winning something from it. “But let’s get that food in you, first. You can always drop me back here on the way home.” 

—

12:02 AM, Niihama City, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9 

“Food” turns out to be ramen at one of those little street-side yatai, but it’s good ramen, at least. Batou orders the miso ramen with extra toppings and extra noodles, what people call a kaedama, where you finish your noodles, and then the vendor gives you more to put in your broth. The Major orders her old favorite, tonkotsu ramen with extra garlic oil, and they eat in mutual silence for a few minutes, at least until the edge of their hunger is blunted by hot noodles and savory broth. Even so, they don’t bother speaking with words. Not when they’re this busy sipping broth in small, constant sips, as though trying to transfuse it straight to veins that they no longer have. 

But the heat and the nourishment helps, Batou can see, and the Major is sitting a little straighter on her stool by the time she’s finished most of her meal. 

“Thinking of extra noodles?” Batou asks her silently. “It’s not like you have a girlish figure to maintain.” It’s not like either of them can gain any weight. Full prosthetic bodies don’t work like that.

“Yes,” she answers him with surprising gravity, “but if I do that I won’t have enough room for alcohol. Not enough to make me drunk.” 

“That’s what’s more efficient about my chassis. I hold more food.” It’s a gentle teasing jibe that he’s employed on her before, but she only swats gently at his sleeve instead of hacking into his cyberbrain and making him punch himself again. “Why don’t you ask for more chashu or an extra spa egg? That’s more calories than noodles in a more compact package.” 

“I might,” the Major says, and she does, holding her bowl politely out to the vendor, who obliges her with a nod. She waits for Batou to finish his bowl of ramen, extra toppings and all, while nibbling thoughtfully on the two additional pieces of chashu the vendor has given her. They dither mentally over who pays the bill after they’re done eating, and Batou does, which means the Major’s on the hook for the bar bill, whatever it’s going to be. 

Batou has gone drinking with the Major before, and she tends to approach alcohol in two ways. One: she nurses a drink all evening, pacing herself leisurely, and not getting the least bit tipsy. That’s what usually happens when they’re on call, which they almost always are. Two: Something has upset her enough that she decides the only remedy is to disengage the alcohol processing unit on her cyberliver, and proceed to obliterate her consciousness with a succession of shots. It doesn’t take as many to do that as you would think. Absent the functions of an alcohol processing unit, a cyberliver is only slightly more efficient at handling alcohol than a normal human liver is. It’s just far more resistant to cirrhosis, usually. 

This is a pattern of drinking that Batou hasn’t encountered before, though, not with the Major. She does neither of the two things he’s used to expecting, and instead sits at the bar, mulling wordlessly over her drink without even touching it once. Batou is two shots in when he finally cracks and asks her a question. 

“What are we doing here?” he asks, as gently as he knows how to, mind to mind. Batou knows he is not usually a gentle man, and he takes extra care with his mental tone of voice.

“Displacement activity,” the Major says. “I’m waiting for a call.”

“You’re waiting for — oh,” Batou says, a little stupidly, comprehension dawning belatedly upon him. In his defense, he’s two shots in, working on a third, and he’s also disengaged the alcohol processing unit on his cyberliver. He doesn’t advocate drinking to cope, because that’s just a slip-and-slide away from functional alcoholism, but as alcohol itself is a muscle relaxant and a depressant, a little medicinal drink is handy from time to time. 

The Major is waiting for the call from Harima to come, to tell her whether Proto has survived, or will die. The hallways of the Section 9 HQ are too quiet now, as is her apartment, for her to wait for the news, pacing silently all night, and so she has dragged Batou out to a bar where the sounds of others can at least time out that terrible wait through the night. 

Batou slows the pace of his drinking then and waits silently with her, because he won’t let her face this ordeal alone. He wasn’t there for her when she found Kuze dead, he wasn’t there for Togusa when he found Proto no longer breathing. He won’t fail either of them this time around. 

—

3:58 AM, Niihama City, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9 

It’s almost closing time, and the bartender is giving Batou a slightly pointed look that says _piss or get off the pot, just go home already_ , when the Major sits up straight on her barstool. She patches Batou wordlessly into a call she’s getting, for emotional support. 

“Major Kusanagi?” That’s Dr. Kanazawa, all right, and he sounds a wreck. But then he’s been working on Proto for about 8 hours straight, if Batou’s calculations are right.

“Yes. I’m here, Doctor,” the Major says, cool, collected. You wouldn’t know anything about the stress she was under, to hear her voice in your head. But Batou can see her fingers tightening around her shot glass, and he gives her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder, to remind her to let go before she cracks it into shards. She puts the shot glass down, but does not shake Batou’s hand off. 

“Ah, yes. Our repairs on Proto appear to have been successful, and the diagnostics indicate that his body is attempting self repair,” Kanazawa says. “It’s of course still uncertain how much damage he’s taken to his biologic processor and neurochip, we’ll find that out once he’s regained consciousness, and we don’t expect him to do so right now.”

“How long do you think he’ll need?”

“We have him in an induced coma for now, we’ll begin weaning him off the ventilator once his vital signs improve, probably in about eight to ten hours from now, and probably another twelve hours for him to fully awaken. You should really take more care of him, you know.” Dr. Kanazawa sounds crochety, upset that Section 9 has allowed Japan’s only prototype bioroid to nearly die on the job. Well, he would be feeling proprietary, since he did most of the cyber-engineering work to create Proto’s unique, partially organic body in the first place. 

“I’ll need to debrief him later. Could you notify me when he’s awake and lucid?”

“Of course. Dr. Asuda will be monitoring his functions to see if there are any further repairs required in the next 12 to 24 hours.”

“Thank you very much, Doctor, for your hard work. Please, get some rest.” 

“You too, Major.” 

The Major lets out a long sigh at the conclusion of the call, then picks up her shot glass and drains it, throwing her drink back all at once. The ice in it has long melted, so it does not clatter against her teeth, and she swallows, her face turned upward to the dim light. Then she pays for their drinks, slides off her barstool, and starts to leave, even as Batou is finishing his own drink. He pauses to slide an extra tip to the bartender for putting up with them the whole evening, and then catches up with her in the street. 

“Going home?” Batou asks her, as he climbs in the passenger seat of the car. 

“I don’t know,” she says, making a show of adjusting the rear-view mirror. More displacement activity.

“Is there anything I can do for you now?” Batou asks her, and she turns to look at him, her face soft, sad, lost. 

“Could you come and stay with me today?” she asks him silently, unable to say it with her throat and mouth. “I don’t know if I can be alone right now.”

“Always,” Batou murmurs, answering her in kind. 

—

4:17 AM, Niihama City, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9

The Major is on top of Batou the moment they get in the doorway, and he pushes her back against her armored door, careful not to trip the security as she kisses him softly, desperately, her lips still tasting of the whisky she drank. He lets his hands slide down her back, around her waist, and reciprocates each kiss hungrily, eagerly. He traces the line of her jaw and the curve of her neck with his lips, kissing her through the high roll neck of her sweater, and her fingers tangle in his hair as she guides his head, pushing lower and lower as he stoops to warm her synthetic skin with his breath, to nibble lightly at the undersides of her breasts with his teeth. 

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. It’s not professional to sleep with your commanding officer, not especially if you’re second-in-command, but they’ve always found loopholes in which to act on their desire for each other. Like the time two years and some change ago when Section 9 was dissolved, and rank ceased to matter between them. They had fucked hungrily, bruisingly, joyously, in the few moments that they could. But this time is different, Batou senses, because there is no loophole this time round. It’s a fundamental breach in their unspoken agreement to stay professional while on the job, and he would suspect the reasons that led the Major to this decision, if he weren’t so tired and lonely and in need of comfort himself. So he does not question her desire, or her acting on those desires, in these molten minutes, and only chooses to lose himself in her, and to comfort her in return. 

He kisses his way down her hard, smooth belly as he drops to his knees before her, kisses his way up the fly of her jeans, and she shivers in anticipation as he unbuckles her belt. The cold metal button on her fly presses hard against his chin as he kisses her on the sensitive skin above her waistband and unzips her. The door groans softly behind her as her knees begin to go, and he’s tugging her jeans down, tucking his fingertips under the elastic waistband of her panties. 

She always smells so good to him — not the organic salty-sweet fragrance of an uncyberized woman’s cunt, no, but there is something to her, a unique milky scent that’s the smell of her synthetic skin, combined with the faint perfumes in the soaps and shampoo she uses, the lingering smell of fabric softener and laundry detergent on her clothes, and always, beneath that, a smoky hint of spent gunpowder and the faintly acrid tang of coolant. 

The Major lets out a soft, keening sound when Batou runs the tip of his tongue up the folds of her vulva, wetting her, finding the wetness in her, and she shivers, her head tilting back on her neck as he finds her clitoris with tongue and lips. He can’t see her moving, not from where he’s kneeling, but he can feel the shifts in her center of gravity as she tilts her hips forward to give him better access to her cunt. 

Batou laps at her softly, maddeningly for what feels like forever, testing her with his mouth and his breath, and he ignores the ache of his cock, the maddening friction against his own jeans, when he pauses to slide his thick fingers into her cunt. There’ll be more than enough time for that, he thinks, and grins privately at the raw groan he gets out of her when he curls his fingers forward. He redoubles his efforts after that, lapping at her clitoris with the full length of his tongue, thrusting his fingers up and up even as she tenses sweetly around him. 

Batou has learned the Major’s responses by now, and it’s easy, so easy for him to tip her over the edge when he wants. She comes hard and wet around his fingers, shaking, pulling painfully at his hair, but he doesn’t let up. He wants to make her beg for mercy, so he slides his fingers yet further into her, as deep as they can go, and begins to suckle at her clit with his pursed lips. That brings her off again, and she arches up into his touch, wailing, her voice breaking in her throat. Her voice dies down to a little whimper as he pauses to let her catch her breath, and then rises again into a shout as he gives her a hard lick, another one, fast and merciless as he tips her into orgasm again. 

This time she pushes his head away before he can continue, and he lets his fingers slide out of her, gets up off his knees to lean against her and steady her against his body. She’s panting, her eyes half-closed, and he can feel the thumping of her mechanical heart in her chest through the clothes that they’re still wearing. Batou groans softly as the Major pushes back against him, the pressure of her body rubbing the metal-toothed fly of his jeans maddeningly against the sensitive underside of his cock. 

“How do you want to do this?” he murmurs into her ear, as she lets an arm drop limply around her neck. They had fucked hard against a wall the last time they had done this, his fingers digging into the rounded curves of her ass as he held her up, driving up and up and up into her. 

This time she lets her head rest on his shoulder, and he pets her gently, supporting most of her weight as she leans into him. “The bed,” she whispers up at him, “please.” Batou picks her bodily up, like a child, or a doll, one arm under her shoulders and the other one under her knees. This is something he has never done with the Major. She would probably punch him if he tried, any other time. 

But this is what she wants now.

They struggle with their clothes as they fall together in her bed, frantic, desperate. The annoying thing about wearing boots in winter is that they’re a complete pain in the ass to kick off in a moment like this. But they’re nothing if not persistent and eager, and in the end they lie naked against each other, skin-to-skin. The Major opens herself up to Batou, wrapping her legs around his waist as he feeds the head of his cock into the soft folds of her vulva. She’s hot, so hot inside, slick like sodden silk, and he bites back a groan against his own pleasure as he sinks deep into her. 

The world falls away from Batou, fear and pain and worry and his sensorium narrows to what truly matters — the Major in his arms, beneath him, panting and arching up into each of his thrusts as he begins to fuck her in earnest. He’s never known her to be this passive before, and it is as though he is discovering a new her this early morning, as they fall into mindless rhythm together. Batou babbles nonsense into the Major’s fragrant hair and her soft skin, murmuring senseless praise at the shocking heat and wetness of her cunt, of how good she feels when she tenses around him in pleasure, and it’s a struggle to pace himself, to keep himself on the edge instead of losing himself entirely in her. 

The Major moans and cries out, her head rolling back on the pillow beneath her, and eventually he feels her fingers slipping between their bodies, feels her hand start to move. She’s playing with herself, he realizes, and that thought goes straight to his balls, zings up his spine in a burst of raw hunger and desire. “Look at you,” he pants into her ear, “being so filthy for me, because of me.” 

“Yes,” she gasps, shivers, “there — right there.” She’s frantic, close to the edge again and exquisitely tight around him, tensing so sweetly around his cock. The tension is almost unbearable and he tries to hold back, barely manages to, before the Major comes around him. She arches up again, thrusting her full breasts outward, and Batou stares, captivated at the raw pleasure in her face, his mind unable to string another thought together as he, too, tips over the edge. He thrusts up into her, up and up again, seeking his own relief as his balls pulse hotly, his spine alight. The world disintegrates around him as he comes hot and hard and messy, spilling himself deep inside her, and the only thing he knows is the warmth of her embrace, the wet molten heaven of her cunt fluttering eagerly around him. 

Batou remains silent and still for a minute afterwards, catching his breath, before he remembers to take his weight back on his elbows. He rolls over onto his back, and lets out a long, weary sigh. The first rays of the false dawn have begun to lighten the leaden winter sky, but true sunrise is at least an hour away. The bed shifts slightly as the Major rolls over onto her side and presses her face against Batou’s shoulder, and he slides his arm under her, around her shoulders, as he gathers her close. 

“Can you stay?” she whispers into her ear, her breath soft against his skin. 

“As long as you need me to,” Batou says. 

—

9:32AM, Niihama City, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9

Batou wakes and checks the clock in his cyberbrain, sighs. He’s barely gotten four and a half hours’ sleep, and he would like more. Maybe he might still get it. There are no notifications in his vision, no missed calls or messages. The Major is curled up beside him, tucked against his flank, her face still pressed up against his shoulder, and she is breathing slowly, deeply. 

It’s a little cold, and he manages to grab the edge of a sheet, drag it half over himself, before she stirs a little. “It’s all right,” Batou tells her, after he finishes covering them both up “Go back to sleep.” 

But she doesn’t. Instead she shifts against him, rolling over onto her other side, and Batou rolls over too, tucks an arm around her spoon-wise. “You know how I became cyberized,” she says, softly, very quietly in the morning hush of her otherwise empty apartment. 

Batou knows, but it’s not anything she’s ever told him about. He’s only read about it in her dossier. “It was a plane crash, wasn’t it? You were the only survivor.”

“I wasn’t,” the Major says. “There was another child. A boy.” 

Batou waits silently, patiently, for her to continue, and he feels her backing up against him, snuggling closer. He could get used to this, he thinks, and then forces the thought away. This is something he can’t get used to, if they want to stay professional. 

“I didn’t really remember him at first, because I spent all of my time in the hospital comatose. Sleeping, I suppose. But he folded cranes for me. Hundreds of them, thousands, in the hope that I would wake. And he did it with only his left hand, because he was paralyzed from his injuries.”

“And you did, didn’t you? You’re here now.”

“I never did, not to him. My condition deteriorated, and the doctors decided to perform an experimental surgery upon me to save my life. They cyberized me, and gave me a prosthetic body. To him, it was as though I had died, because I was wheeled out of the ward, and never returned. And my military education was guaranteed that day onward, because who else was going to pay for the R&D required to create my body, or the others that I would require, as I grew older?” 

Batou knows that catch-22 intimately. He enlisted because he couldn’t live in his old skin any more. He also knows that the Major knows, but she has never judged him because of it. His birth sex is something that has never come between them, in their long knowledge of each other. 

“Two years after I was cyberized,” the Major continues, “I was asked to visit a little boy at a hospital. He was paralyzed, except for his left hand. And he spoke to no one, except to ask for more paper to fold paper cranes with. I did not know who he was. I had slept the whole time he had known me. They wanted me to help convince him to undergo an operation, to give him a new body. A prosthetic one. I left without finding out if he had ever made the decision, or if it was made for him. But it seems he was educated similarly to me, and became a prodigy, also, at controlling a prosthetic body.” 

Batou puts two and two together, then. Another veteran, a prodigy. “That boy,” he asks. “He was Kuze?” 

“Yes,” the Major says. 

“I — I’m so sorry.” The apology sounds clumsy, useless, and Batou feels a tiny shudder run down the Major’s spine. 

“There’s nothing anyone can do about it now,” she says, her voice half-muffled by her pillow. “He’s gone, and only after I’d just found him again.”

“I can keep holding you, if you’d like,” Batou offers. It’s the only thing he can think to do in this fractured moment.

“Yes,” the Major whispers. “It will have to do.” Batou holds her tightly as she begins to cry finally for the first friend she had ever lost, the first boy she had ever loved, and she sobs, shaking, into her pillow as he kisses the back of her head, traces the interface plugs on the back of her neck with his mouth. This is the only way he can comfort her, he knows, because he is not Kuze, and can never be. 

_So what if she doesn’t love me?_ Batou thinks, as she turns to him, her mouth salty against his. _I love her, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving her. Even if I’m just a means to an end, at least it’s a way I can be there for her._

So Batou kisses the tears off the Major’s cheeks, and he lets his hands wander over her body again, as she climbs over him. He memorizes the bumps of her spine and how they lie in low relief under her skin, how her synthetic muscles bunch against his touch as she tenses up against him, and he lets her lose her grief in him. He lies in acquiescence to her desires as they kiss and kiss again, and worships the full curves of her breasts with his mouth and hands, teasing lightly at her nipples with his teeth. 

Batou’s love for her is like a thief in the night, fed on hoarded moments like this, and he consents fully to being used as her substitute and surrogate, because this is the only way he can love her. This time is slower, more languorous than their previous experiences together, and she straddles him and rides his cock with less desperation than before. Batou wants to tell her he loves her, he wants to whisper it in her ear, or cry it into her mind silently, without a voice, but he knows what they have is like a soap bubble. It will burst and vanish the moment he tries to reach out and grasp it. 

He can only hold his hand out, and wait for it to pass by in his wake. And so his heart remains silent even as he begins to thrust up into her, to find that rhythm that seemed so easy and effortless last night. He listens, in the absence of words, to the way her breath catches in her throat, and the tiny sounds of pleasure he manages to wring out of her with his mouth and hands and body. 

“You’re so good to me, Batou,” the Major pants in his ear as she leans in, her full breasts pressing warm against his chest, and he slides the fingers of his right hand into her hair, and closes them. She gasps at the audacity, at the intimacy of his fingers on her scalp, and he guides her movement with gentle tugs, dragging her down the shaft of his cock with his other hand on her hip. He can feel her grinding herself up against the ridge of his pubic bone, wet and slick as he rocks up mindlessly into her, and she is perfect, hot and sodden and real, filthy and sweet as she is each and every time they’ve done this. 

“That’s all I ever want to be,” Batou breathes, their faces almost touching, “that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do for you.” 

“I know,” she whispers, “I know, I’ve always known.”

And perhaps, that will be enough. It will have to be enough, and Batou blinds himself to reality, to the fact that they will have to pretend that this never happened at all, when they have to get up and face the day. Which they will, eventually. 

But eventually is not now, and what he has in the present is the Major desperate and eager on his cock, her hair so soft in his fist, her lips brushing against his as she pants in response to each of his long, aching thrusts. She reaches between them both to touch herself again, and Batou lets go of her hair, lets her straighten back up so he can watch. She rubs at her clit in small tight circles, tensing and relaxing around his cock as she brings herself closer to climax, and Batou takes hold of her hips with both his hands then, stops trying to last against the heat and wetness of her cunt. She’s trembling, exquisitely tight around him as he slams himself upward into her, and that tears a scream out of her throat. She tilts her head upwards, arching back triumphantly in pleasure, and the ache in the pit of Batou’s belly, in his cock and balls, gives way to sweet spasms of bliss that threaten to drag him under. 

This time, she does not ask him to stay afterwards. 

But he does not offer to leave, and they fall asleep again, for a time. 

—

11:53 PM, Niihama City, Hyogo Prefecture Standard Time, GMT+9

It’s dark out again when Batou wakes this time, and he blinks when he registers the clock in his augmented vision. It’s nearly midnight. Which meant that they were out for what, more than fourteen hours? It’s a little disgraceful, he thinks, but no calls have arrived from HQ, just a couple of advisory notes from Chief Aramaki and Togusa. 

The Major is sitting up beside Batou, her knees drawn to her chest under the sheet, and he knows her posture, even in the dark, because his low-light vision has kicked in automatically. 

“Good news,” she says to him, after a few moments of silence. “Dr. Asuda just called. Proto has finally woken up. He’s alert and oriented, but not really ready for debriefing yet, so they’re going to let him sleep until morning and do another diagnostic pass. He’s probably going to be fine.” 

Batou’s glad at the news, but also a little disappointed, because this is when they have to start being professional again. Still, it was good, what he and the Major shared over the last 30-ish hours, and it’s something he will hold on to, even as he starts to compartmentalize. “Good to hear,” he says. 

“Anyway,” she says, “I think you’ve been here long enough. We should go get some food, and then I’ll drop you off at the HQ afterwards.” 

“Sure,” Batou says, “what do you have in mind?” 

“I don’t know yet,” the Major says. “I should get in the shower first, then we’ll talk about dinner.” 

Batou does not offer to follow her into the shower. That’s not how he should talk to her now. He only leans back on his pillow and watches her as she slides out of bed gloriously naked, a greenish shadow in his low-light vision. But she pauses, to his surprise, and caresses his cheek with a hand, her fingers cool against his face. And then she kisses him, long and soft and sweet, in a way she never has before. Their previous kisses had been hungry, ravenous with unfulfilled desire. But this, this is different.

 _Kuze was the first boy I ever loved,_ that kiss says to Batou, _but not the last one I ever have,_ and he sees the truth in her silence, in her wordless acceptance of his love for her. This is something they can never say aloud, he knows, not while they still both work at Section 9.

But perhaps it will be enough. 

“How’s about I message the guys,” Batou suggests, “and then we see if we can all go out for yakiniku? I need to call Togusa anyway, with the good news. He was pretty torn up about what happened to Proto. It'll be good for morale.” 

“Yakiniku.” The Major mulls it over for a few seconds. “Sounds good. Why don’t you do that while I’m in the shower? I’ll remember to leave enough hot water for you.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Batou says.


End file.
